Content Multiplication Magic, Happy Design, More – Roger’s Picks

We’ve got a double dose of great content for you this week. We didn’t publish a roundup “picks” post last week due to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. Here’s what you don’t want to miss:

My Stuff

The cover of Brainfluence and I made a quick guest appearance on CNBC’s Closing Bell. The other guest, behavioral psychotherapist Paul Hokemeyer (@drpaulnyc), and I commented briefly on the concept of shopper fatigue and sluggish retail sales on Black Friday this year. More, including the video, is here: Neuromarketing on CNBC.

We’d all like to give our credibility a little boost, and A Simple Hack That Makes You MUCH More Persuasive explains one quick and easy way to do that. In the article I look at the oddly persuasive effect of including charts, graphs, brain scan images, and other scientific-looking visual content in your blog posts, presentations, etc.

He isn’t straight out of Criminal Minds and doesn’t spend his days chasing psychopathic serial killers, but as the top FBI behavior expert Robin Dreeke (@rdreeke) learned a lot about establishing quick rapport with people. In Episode #35: Influence Tips from the FBI’s Former Top Behaviorist, Robin Dreeke, we learn clever ways to instantly connect with strangers, tricks for putting people at ease, and more.

We skipped our weekly picks last week because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., so the most recent one is Psychology Hacks for Social Media, More – Roger’s Picks. You’ll learn about the best website redesign strategy, how to use “authority” in marketing, the science behind Facebook’s addictive properties, and more.

We know how powerful stories are, but Bryan Eisenberg (@TheGrok) and Jeffrey Eisenberg (@JeffreyGroks) use stories in a surprising but potent way. I chat with them in Episode #34: Buyer Legends with Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg. Listen in to learn about their new book and the simple process of creating your own buyer legends.

Around the Web

Companies like Lumosity have scored tens of millions of venture capital to promote brain training, but do their games actually improve cognitive skills beyond playing the games themselves? Unfortunately for those of us who’d like a quick path to a better brain, the evidence seems to say they don’t. Scientific American’s David Z. Hambrick reviews the data in Brain Training Doesn’t Make You Smarter.

Want to build your reputation and authority? You need content, and not just on your own site. Influence & Co (@InfluenceandCo) provides some solid advice in their Hubspot ebook, Discover the Power of Getting Published Online. (It’s a free download, but you will have to register.)

What exactly is “happy design,” and why should you have it? Pamela Pavliscak (@paminthelab) explains all in The Science of Happy Design.

You’ve got landing pages on your website. Maybe you designed them for specific traffic, or perhaps they are simply pages where visitors arrive from unexpected sources. What happens next depends on your design – will they hit the back button or keep reading? Will they turn into a lead or customer? AlexDesigns (@alexdesigns) tells you how to cut your bounces and conversion failures in The Psychology of Landing Pages: Drilling Into The Buyer’s Consciousness.

Just because playing brain games won’t make you smarter doesn’t mean you can’t rewire your brain. We know that exercise is good for your brain. Now, Harvard researchers have found that meditation can change the gray matter of the brain. Check Feelguide (@FEELguide)’s Harvard Unveils MRI Study Proving Meditation Literally Rebuilds The Brain’s Gray Matter In 8 Weeks to learn more. Ohmmmm….

I happened to listen to a podcast in which Dan Norris (@thedannorris), founder of WPCurve (@WPCurve), offered (foolishly?) to review listener websites and provide feedback. After hours of no-doubt mind-numbing website reviews, he found a surprising number of common issues. You don’t want to look at all those websites, so get the distilled findings in Lessons learned reviewing 300 websites in 2 weeks (how to build a decent website).

Want your prices to look more attractive without cutting your margins? Gregory Ciotti (@GregoryCiotti) reviews 10 Classic Studies on Pricing Psychology. Neuromarketing and Brainfluence readers will be familiar with many of these, but there are probably at least a few in the list that will be new.

I’ve already started using one idea I got from this post by Jay Baer (@jaybaer). We’re all caught between the need to create more content and the limited time we have available. In How to make 8 pieces of content from 1 piece of content Jay shows his own process for multiplying one content creation across different media and networks.

Got your own great find? Share it in a comment!